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Jan. 28 — UCSB Arts & Lectures presents Ensemble Intercontemporain at the Lobero Theatre

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Performing Olga Neuwirth’s new score to a 1924 silent film that highlights the horrors of anti-semitism

SUMMARY

“That’s what I think artists are sometimes for, to say no to the rise of hatred.” – Olga Neuwirth

“Ensemble Intercontemporain is the Stradivarius of modern music.” – 2022 Polar Music Prize Announcement

Regarded as the world’s leading contemporary music group, Ensemble Intercontemporain make a rare appearance to present Olga Neuwirth’s score for the 1924 satirical silent filmDie Stadt ohne Juden (The City Without Jews). Under music director Matthias Pintscher, the French musicians will accompany the movie directed by Hans Karl Breslauer for which Neuwirth wrote music “both touching and harsh, warm-hearted and open, amusing and furious, involved and distanced, humorous and sad all at once.”

View a short video profile of Ensemble Intercontemporain

ABOUT THE FILM DIE STADT OHNE JUDEN

Die Stadt ohne Juden (The City Without Jews) is a dystopian satire that imagines what Vienna would be like without its Jewish citizens. Director Hans Karl Breslauer made the film as a protest against the rise of anti-semitism in Germany and Austria in the 1920s. For decades following its initial release, the film was only available as a fragment. The current project involving Ensemble Intercontemporain began when an intact full-length version of Die Stadt ohne Juden was discovered at a Paris flea market in 2015. A crowdsourced campaign financed its digital restoration, and composer Olga Neuwirth wrote her new score in 2016 as a statement against the rise of anti-semitic hate groups around the world.

To learn more about the story of this unusual film, read Long-lost film that predicted rise of anti-Semitism has ominous message for today’s world in the Washington Post and/or ‘Lost’ Austrian film predicting rise of nazism restored and relaunched in The Guardian.

ABOUT ENSEMBLE INTERCONTEMPORAIN

In 1976, Pierre Boulez founded the Ensemble Intercontemporain with the support of Michel Guy (who was France’s Minister of Culture at the time) and the collaboration of arts administrator Nicholas Snowman.

The Ensemble’s 31 soloists share a passion for 20th–21st century music. They are employed on permanent contract, enabling them to fulfill the major aims of the Ensemble: performance, creation and education for young musicians and the general public. Under the artistic direction of Matthias Pintscher, the musicians work in close collaboration with composers, exploring instrumental techniques and developing projects that interweave music, dance, theater, film, video and visual arts.

In collaboration with IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), the Ensemble Intercontemporain is also active in the field of synthetic sound generation. New pieces are commissioned and performed on a regular basis.

The Ensemble is renowned for its strong emphasis on music education: concerts for kids, creative workshops for students, training programs for future performers, conductors, composers, etc.

Resident at the Cité de la musique – Philharmonie de Paris, the Ensemble performs and records in France and abroad, taking part in major festivals worldwide.

The Ensemble is financed by the Ministry of Culture and receives additional support from the Paris City Council. In 2022, it was awarded the prestigious Polar Music Prize.

ABOUT MATTHIAS PINTSCHER

The 2022-23 season is Matthias Pintscher’s final season as Music Director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the world’s foremost contemporary music ensemble, founded in 1980 by Pierre Boulez and winner of the 2022 Polar Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy, the equivalent of the “Nobel Prize” in music. In his decade-long artistic leadership of the EIC, Pintscher continued and expanded the cultivation of new work by emerging composers of the 21st century, alongside performances of iconic works by the pillars of the avant-garde of the 20th Century. In this, his valedictory season, Pintscher has a robust season of concerts scheduled in Paris including collaborations with the Conservatoire de Paris and Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM), operas-in-concert, and tours throughout Europe and the United States, including performances in Carnegie Hall and Walt Disney Concert Hall.

As a conductor, Pintscher enjoys and maintains relationships with several of the world’s most distinguished orchestras, among them the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He is also Creative Partner for the Cincinnati Symphony, a title that began with the 20/21 season during the COVID-19 pandemic. He appears with them several times each season as conductor on their regular subscription series, and as performer and creator on other series and specials, with the intent and effect of enlarging the footprint and understanding of what it means to be a symphony orchestra in the 21st century. As guest conductor in Europe, he makes debut appearances this season with the Wiener Symphoniker and Gürzenich Orchester of Cologne, and returns to the Royal Concertgebouw, BRSO, BBC Scottish SO, Barcelona Symphony, and Berlin’s Boulez Ensemble.

In North America, he will make prominent debuts with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Kansas City Symphony, in addition to regular visits to Cincinnati Symphony, and repeat guest engagements with the Detroit Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and New World Symphony. Pintscher has also conducted several opera productions for the Berliner Staatsoper (Beat Furrer’s Violetter Schnee, Wagner’s Lohengrin), Wiener Staatsoper (Olga Neuwirth’s Orlando), and the Théatre du Châtelet in Paris. He returns to the Berliner Staatsoper in 2023 for Die Fliegende Holländer.

Pintscher is well known as a composer, and his works appear frequently on the programs of major symphony orchestras throughout the world. In August 2021, he was the focus of the Suntory Hall Summer Festival – a weeklong celebration of his works with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra as well as a residency by the EIC with symphonic and chamber music performances. His newest work, Assonanza II, a violin concerto written for Leila Josefowicz, was premiered in January 2022 with the Cincinnati Symphony. Another 2021-22 world premiere was neharot (“rivers”), a co- commission of Suntory Hall, Staatskapelle Dresden, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and Los Angeles Philharmonic.

ABOUT UCSB ARTS & LECTURES

Founded in 1959, UCSB Arts & Lectures (A&L) is the largest and most influential arts and lectures organization between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A&L annually presents more than a hundred public events, from critically acclaimed concerts and dance performances by world-renowned artists to talks by groundbreaking authors and film series at UCSB and Santa Barbara-area venues. With a mission to “educate, entertain and inspire,” A&L also oversees an outreach program that brings visiting artists and speakers into local classrooms and other venues for master classes, open rehearsals, discussions and more, serving K-12 students, college students and the general public.

Tickets are $24 – $41 General Public / $11 All Students (Current student ID required) (includes facility fee)

For tickets or more information, call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535 or purchase online at www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu. 

Tickets are also available through the Lobero Theatre box office at (805) 963-0761 and lobero.org

UCSB Arts & Lectures gratefully acknowledges our Community Partners the Natalie Orfalea Foundation & Lou Buglioli for their generous support of the 2022-2023 season.    

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